Lpc2000

>    From: "philips_apps" <philips_apps@...>

> give us a break, please. There are things we could improve, e.g.
> the Flash interface and we did (fastest ARM7 microcontroller
> running from Flash).

Yes, the MAM is great.

> There are things that are just not the major strength of an
> ARM microcontroller, port switching is definitely one of them.
> Honestly, our LPC900 family can switch a port just about as
> fast as the ARM can do. 

Admit it, the GPIO performance *is* a problem, not just 
theoretically, but because of application issues. Our current 
development rquires a script interpreter and good bit-banging. 
We can improve the situation with some software complexity by 
perverting the SPI pins, but even this gives us a maximum 
throughput of 7.5MHz. To make best use of the script 
interpreter, 16k-64k of RAM is wonderful and having a 32 bit CPU 
core is ideal for the software.

But, a 50MHz Silabs 8051 derivative can bit-bang at nearly the 
same rate, and we probably could shoehorn some form of script 
interpreter into it.

Yes, I know that LPC2xxx chips use the -S core, but the GPIO 
could be on the high speed bus.

For our application, if the SPI could be run twice as fast or we 
had fast GPIO, I wouldn't complain at all. At the moment, the 
GPIO performance is the single biggest let-down on the LPC2xxx 
family. Are you really going to let Atmel and others steal 
market share?

The combination of fast 32 bit CPU core, copious Flash and RAM, 
and *fast* i/o lets us do things that we could not do before for 
the price. At this early stage in its lifecycle, the LPC2xxx 
chips are already very good. All we're asking you to do is to 
make them really excellent!

Stephen

--
Stephen Pelc, stephen@...
MicroProcessor Engineering Ltd - More Real, Less Time
133 Hill Lane, Southampton SO15 5AF, England
tel: +44 23 80 631441, fax: +44 23 80 339691
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